Inside the Outside Mind of Ted Naron

I know (and respect) that the Occupy Wall Street movement is leaderless, but I’m still curious who thought of the words Occupy Wall Street. You know that was one person, not a group. Maybe someday we will know. Kudos to whoever it was, because the phrase has become iconic, having now been parodied in a thousand different ways. It really does have a magical power, in a way that Seize Wall Street or March on Wall Street or Main Street vs. Wall Street never could.

Do you know? How do we find out? If Facebook could get Betty White on SNL, surely the hivemind of the internet can identify the person we have to thank for this contribution to the language.

The most depressing thing about S&P’s downgrading the credit rating of the United States is this: the absolute certainty that the Republican candidate for president in 2012, whoever he or she is, will be saying these words…

“Can you vote to re-elect the man who presided over the first credit rating downgrade in our nation’s history?”

The unfairness of that charge won’t do anything to mitigate its devastating effectiveness.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think that someone at Standard & Poor’s is inserting himself into the political process and doesn’t want Obama to have another term.

If you’re not feeling your quota of rage just yet, watch the HBO documentaryHot Coffee. It starts with the famous “ridiculous” McDonald’s case, revealing that it was not ridiculous after all, and then goes on to show how corporations and the AMA, cleverly leveraging the popular perception of that case to convince Americans that we are too litigious, worked successfully with our state legislatures to get us to relinquish our rights to collect appropriate remedies through our judiciary system — the one branch of government that was open to us — when we’ve been harmed.

It doesn’t sound like fun, but the film is so riveting, I couldn’t stop watching. There’s a website for the film which contains links to organizations that are fighting this, which I’m going to give some money to. So the film not only showed me something new, it spurred me into action. The model of successful muckraking.

I fully accept that most Republicans in the House of Representatives are from districts where most of the people are stupid; these constituents don’t understand the scale of the financial catastrophe that will result from failure to reach an agreement to raise the U.S. debt ceiling, and, being relatively poor, don’t have much to lose if it happens, and so their congresspeople pander to them.

But a certain number of House Republicans — not a majority, but a not-negligible portion — come from suburban districts where most of the people have some education and a modicum of intelligence. And, more to the point, these constituents have money, and therefore stand to lose a lot of it when the market in every type of security collapses as a consequence of the U.S. defaulting on its debt. These Republican constituents, you would think, would be contacting their congresspeople and saying, “Look, you a-holes, do what it takes to come to some kind of agreement in time to prevent my portfolio from going down the toilet.” There ought to be enough Republicans from that kind of district to make a difference.

I still have faint optimism that the intelligent, monied, self-interested people in Republican congressional districts will exert this kind of pressure on their representatives, but I have to confess some head-scratching that it hasn’t happened yet.

When Hitler died, some immediately fretted that the USSR would fill half the power vacuum in Germany. And they weren’t wrong. But it didn’t change the fact that his death was a glorious day for the civilized world. As is this.

All that goodness is encased in foie gras brioche made in house (in which fresh, foie gras butter is incorporated into freshly baked brioche). You’ll also get lobster tater tots accompanied by a rich, creamy caviar Hollandaise for dipping.